This invention relates generally to floor matting and yarn for its manufacture but especially to entrance matting and matting for use in cleaning shoes.
In the past, shoe and boot cleaning mats, such as door mats and entrance mats, have been made of coco, rubber and the like. In more recent times, such matting has also been constructed of Nylon tufts with vinyl backing. Although nylon matting offers some advantages over earlier entrance matting, it has the disadvantages that it soils easily, it compresses in all directions (therefore it appears ragged), it fades in color, and it does not adequately clean shoes.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,191 to Schwartz discloses a monofilament-wrap texturizing product which basically describes a yarn formed as a bundle of heavy denier thermoplastic monofilament strands, which were helically wrapped. In practice the wrapping strand was a multifilament thermoplastic strand. This bundle, including all its strands, was then forced into a stuffer box crimper which randomly crimped all of the strands. As noted above, all of the wrapped strands used for making the yarn in this patent were monofilaments.
Yarn manufactured in the general manner described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,191 to Schwartz has been used as tufts for making entrance matting for a number of years. Although this entrance matting has been remarkably efficient in cleaning footwear of people walking on the matting, it has also had the disadvantages that it has been rather course and feels hard. Further, it has been almost impossible to clean.
In recent years, multifilament strands have been mixed in yarn bundles for manufacturing entrance matting which is somewhat softer in feel but yet which also has good footwear-cleaning characteristics. In this regard, one such mixture that has been on the market has had approximately 50% multistrands and 50% monostrands. Matting of such yarn has been manufactured for about two years. Although this matting can be cleaned better than could matting constructed purely of monofilament yarn as was described by Schwartz in U.S. Pat. No. 4,711,191, it still has the difficulty that thread-like debris on the matting cannot be easily removed by commercial cleaning equipment. Thus, thread-like debris which engages such matting must be cleaned by individuals leaning over and removing it by hand.
Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a yarn for making matting, and the matting itself, which can efficiently clean footwear of individuals stepping on the matting, which has a relatively soft feel, and which can be cleaned by commercial cleaning equipment.